


Count Your Lucky Stars

by Ellajane2255



Category: Lockwood & Co. - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Author Is Exposed As A Soft Git, F/M, Hospitals, Hurt & Comfort, I promise, Lockwood & Co. Discord Server 2020 Summer Garden Party Gift, Near Death Experiences, has a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:21:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25937359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellajane2255/pseuds/Ellajane2255
Summary: (DISCLAIMER - I don’t own Lockwood & Co.)What if, in the seconds before you die, you see everyone who was secretly in love with you?(Inspired by a tweet by @/LizHackett on Twitter.)For Jackie, I hope you enjoy!
Relationships: Lucy Carlyle & George Cubbins, Lucy Carlyle/Anthony Lockwood
Comments: 17
Kudos: 56





	Count Your Lucky Stars

**Author's Note:**

> For Jackie! I hope you enjoy, darling! <3

It was supposed to be an easy case for a Friday night before a busy weekend. 

Just a Bone Man and a Shade loitering around the back steps of a cobbler's shop in Hackney, terrifying the elderly gentleman who ran the place with their bumps and childish giggling in the dead of night. Simple. In and out in a few hours. 

Of course, nothing ever went to plan where Lockwood & Co. were involved. 

Which was how Lucy had been standing watch by the shop till when an unseen spectral hand emerged from a glass display case nearby, containing a battered pair of Victorian children’s boots, and shot straight through her stomach. 

She remained vertical just long enough to choke something totally unintelligible before slumping to the floor. 

The Skull’s shriek of alarm was silenced by his jar, and so it was Quill who’s burst of swears alerted Lockwood, who’d been upstairs. 

He was downstairs in a matter of seconds. “Quill? Quill, what’s-“ 

Quill was pulling the unmoving Lucy across the floor, hands under her arms, glaring with venom at the Spectre - a young boy in a baggy white shirt and a flat cap, pale face luminous, watching the two operatives with gigantic, dark eyes. 

Lockwood sprang into action, slicing the apparition in two with one swipe, only for it to reappear beside him, reaching out to grasp his arm with fragile, waifish fingers, only to find itself suddenly without an arm when Lockwood moved his rapier again in a powerful ward. 

It’s psychic voice - soft, probing, and deceptively weak for what was proving to be a _very_ strong Type Two - tugged gently at the edges of Lockwood’s mind, begging to be let in, (not that he would have heard it even it somehow _did_ get in, but the ghost clearly didn’t know that). 

As he covered his face with an arm, and smashed the glass with his other elbow, there was a fizz of muffled static; like hearing a radio from underwater. 

The Spectre was clearly displeased; it materialised once more between Lockwood and the boots, both arms raised as if to pull him into an embrace, face pale and passive, reaching for him; it would never reach him. 

The agent threw a portion of chain net through the Visitor, ectoplasm hissing and spitting, and over the boots. His ears popped; a pressure in the room was released. 

Instinct drove him to wrap the boots tightly in the netting, and stow it safely in the duffle bag behind the till. 

He rushed to Lucy’s side. 

Quill was by the door, talking rapidly into a phone. 

Lockwood knelt beside her form, grasping her wrist. “Lucy? Luce, can you hear me?”, he demanded. 

He slid his wrist across the veins of her wrist to her pulse point. 

There was nothing there. 

-:-:- 

Lucy was floating on air. 

She felt weightless and disorientated, eyes closed, mouth and ears full of cotton wool. 

It was like when she fell asleep in the armchair in the living room, her arm trapped between her side and the upholstery, making it numb when she woke up, but across her entire body. 

She opened her eyes. 

It wasn’t like it had been at Combe Carey; Lockwood, her sisters, and Annabel Ward were nowhere to be seen. The space around her was almost blindingly white; there was a total lack of apparent dimensions, no floor, no boundaries. 

She slowly turned, or at least, altered what she could see. 

Steph, her old teammate from up north, was standing a small distance away. Not a thing had changed since Lucy had last set eyes on Steph - the night of the Wythburn Mill. Her jacket was still too big, her hair hung in a long, limp dark plait over her shoulder, and her rapier almost touched the floor as it hung at her waist. She was smiling. 

“Steph?”. A voice split the silence between them, and Lucy suddenly realised that it was hers. It was raspy, and had an almost metallic quality to that it that was disturbingly unfamiliar. 

The figure didn’t move, but she _smiled_ , acne-spattered cheeks dimpling and lifting to reveal a childish grin. 

Lucy saw herself. 

She was sitting at Jacob’s kitchen table in his tiny cottage, trying to polish her rapier at the minute table. Julie sat to one side of her, with Steph on Julie’s other side. 

A much younger Lucy looked down at her rapier in dismay, before standing with a frustrated huff, and marching off in the direction of the cellar, where their chain-smoking supervisor kept his agency equipment, including silver polish. 

As the back of her dark jacket receded from the room, Julie suddenly elbowed Steph in the ribs. The dark-haired girl scowled at her, face going red as Julie began to giggle and coo teasingly. 

A realisation hit Lucy like a freight train. 

_Did Steph used to have a crush on her?_

The scene faded as quickly as it had appeared, as Steph offered Lucy one last glowing smile, and faded into the bright white surroundings. 

Another familiar, albeit less welcome figure replaced her. 

Thin and looking slightly unwell, apparently even in death, was Harold Mailer. 

He gave her an awkward grin, and a new scene opened. The foyer of the Clerkenwell furnaces was instantly recognisable, as was Lucy, who stumbled across the lobby, bearing a collection of ancient human bones wrapped in chain netting under one arm. She was soaking wet, dripping Thames water onto the tiled floor as she made her way to the desk. 

Lucy remembered the exchange that took place as she observed it: Mailer greeted her in his usual style, she handed over the bones, he handed her some paperwork, she filled it out, and passed it back, before he directed her to the side door which would lead her to a view of the furnaces. 

She knew all of this; what Lucy didn’t know was that Mailer was quite blatantly staring at her backside as she walked away. 

The girl grimaced. 

Like the vision before, only decidedly less wholesome, it disappeared into the ether, leaving behind nothing but a faint sense of revulsion in Lucy’s stomach. 

The revulsion quickly turned to apprehension. 

Who else secretly had a thing for her? Who’s next, Ned Shaw? The girl at the coffee shop who always calls her ‘love’? 

There were no other figures. 

Lucy’s body was warm, and once more, she was floating, like laying back in a warm bath. 

_Was this death?_ , she wondered privately. 

If it was, maybe the afterlife wouldn’t be so bad… 

“Lucy!” 

She lifted her head. “Lockwood?” 

There was no response, but like a swimmer’s when breaching the surface and emerging into the air, her ears popped. 

Suddenly, she was surrounded by noise: a rhythmic clattering, voices chattering and calling, electronic beeping, footsteps of varying speeds and weights. 

“Please! I have to-“ 

Lockwood’s voice was nearby, panicked and on edge. “Lockwood?”, Lucy asked again, more urgently. 

She was now laying horizontal, head propped up on pillows, staring down her body at her work boots. She was moving in the opposite direction to the one in which she was facing with considerable speed. 

The faces of the people closest to her were indistinct, but the ones slightly further away were immediately clear and recognisable; Lockwood, George, Holly, and Quill. 

Lockwood was running towards her, but never seemingly getting any closer. It didn’t seem that she could call out to him. 

There was a thud as the bed she was on hit a pair of swinging doors, and a pair of doctors appeared beside Lockwood, holding him back, telling him that he had to stop there. He was crying. 

The doors swung shut and Lucy’s vision went black. 

-:-:- 

Everyone has a time when they remember being colder than they ever were before of afterwards. 

That level of cold at which you stop actually feeling the cold, when your body just tenses up and you find yourself nearly incapable of the smallest movement or simplest thought, when your fingers lose sensation and your feet might as well be someone else’s. 

Lucy was _that_ cold. 

The room was silent except for a gentle rushing, interspersed with a soft beeping. 

She opened her eyes, surrounded by thin curtains. 

The room beyond was poorly lit; fluorescent light seeped in from a barely covered panel in the door, and moonlight slid beneath and around the edges of a windowblind somewhere. 

Two figures were hunched beside the bed. 

George’s mop of flaccid blond hair lolled across his arms and onto her covers as he leant over and rested his head on his arms. His glasses were beside his head - and he was snoring softly. 

Closer to her, was Lockwood. 

He was leant back in his chair, head resting on his fist, dark hair in total disarray across his forehead. His clothes were dishevelled and ectoplasm-stained in places. 

She had the bizarre urge to brush his hair away from his eyes. 

Lucy sat silently for an unknown amount of time, absorbing the heat from the electric blanket covering her body until she felt able to function normally. 

Her entire self felt like a hand inside a glove that was the wrong size; nothing quite fit, everything felt… just a little off.

There was a purple hand-shaped bruise on her chest, roughly the size of a dinner plate, which didn’t help matters. 

There was a soft sniffling, and Lockwood’s eyes were opening. 

Lucy watched, smiling softly.

His eyes widened as soon as he saw her. He jerked up. “Luce-“ 

“Shh, shh”, she looked at George, “he’s asleep” 

“How are you?”, he was out of his chair, clutching her hand, “do you need a nurse?” 

“No, I’m fine. Could you turn off that electric heater? It’s getting a bit hot under here”. “Of course” 

He sat back down, and there was a companionable silence. 

Lucy was the one who broke it. “Did you know that Harold Mailer had a crush on me?” 

Lockwood blinked. “What?” 

She repeated herself. He blinked again. “... I suppose. He wasn’t very subtle, but I never gave it much thought” 

“No. I guess not…” 

“Why?” 

Lucy looked at him, then at her hands on the bed covers. “I don’t know… I think I lost oxygen to my brain for a while when I was out. I had… visions? I don’t know, it was all very surreal” 

“Visions?”, Lockwood asked, visibly concerned, “you’re not thinking of becoming one of those wavy-daisy Psychics, are you, Luce?” 

“Don’t be daft, of course not. I… saw my old teammates… and Mailer… and… you lot” 

“You saw us?”, he asked confusedly. “Yeah. Well. I saw you”. “Me?”. “... you were chasing my gurney” 

“I see. That’s-...” 

Lucy scratched her head. “I don’t know what caused that. It’s bizarre-“ 

“That was real. I did run after you, Luce, but they wouldn’t let me in” 

“... oh”, it was more of a release of air and shock than an actual word. 

“I was terrified, Luce. We all were” 

“... you cried” 

“... I did” 

“... I saw it” 

He blew out a gentle breath. “I suppose there might have been some way that you saw it. That you were… still there? Out of body experiences and all that…” 

Lucy shrugged faux-casually, pretending that the plain blue bedspread was more interesting than the young man in front of her. 

Lockwood leant forwards and grasped one of her hands meaningfully, looking her in the eye. “I’m really glad you’re still with us, Luce” 

She couldn’t help but smile. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily”. “I hoped not” 

He gave her hand a final tight squeeze, and released it, sitting back. There was another minute of silence, and Lucy found herself privately wondering if he was… going to say anything about… that. 

The last 24 hours had been a lot, so when she looked up, locked eyes with Lockwood and plainly asked, “do you have a thing for me?”, Lucy could hardly be shocked by herself. 

But she did wonder where the courage to say it had come from. 

Lockwood stared at her, blinking several times, before his ears started to turn red, and he struggled for an answer. “I- I-... Luce, I-“ 

The curtains beside the bed were pulled aside, and a nurse entered. 

Lockwood immediately sat back in his chair, bolt upright. 

She bustled around, checking Lucy’s vitals and making notes in her clipboards, asking how she felt and checking her temperature, which was apparently slightly above what it should have been. 

When the nurse was gone, the silence, once companionable, had soured into awkwardness. Lucy waited for Lockwood to continue, privately noting how she’d _never_ seen him so flustered. 

He looked like an embarrassed teenager, not the competent young leader that she’d always known him to be. 

It was rather comforting to see him that way, if she was honest. 

“Lockwood-“, she began, then hesitated, before continuing calmly, “I’m sorry. It was a stupid question. Don’t feel obligated to answer that” 

“No, it’s-...” 

She waited. 

“I…” 

She waited a little longer. 

“... I think I do” 

“Have a…?” 

“Yeah” 

“... I see…” 

He was quick to continue, anxiously adjusting his coat around him. “You don’t have to- I’ll- I’ll get over it, I promise-“ 

“Oh… don’t do that” 

“What?” 

“Don’t get over it. I think you’re…”, she struggled for a word, “... nice” 

“... nice?” 

“... really nice” 

“... is that your way of saying that you like me?”, he asked, the ghost of a smile washing over his lips. 

“Yes, I suppose it must be” 

“Well you’re really rather nice too, Luce”, he grinned softly, the private smile; the one that he saved for her. She laughed, and he continued - “but you need to get your rest” 

“You sound like Holly” 

“Hmm”, he stood, and moved to her bedside. She looked up at him curiously. He placed a hand on either side of her face, and gently pressed his lips against her forehead. “Get some sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up, I’m just going to get some tea” 

“Alright”, she smiled lightly. 

He returned the smile, and walked towards the curtains, turning to give her a little wave, one that she happily returned, before he disappeared. 

She closed her eyes, still smiling, body suffused with a warm that had nothing to do with the electric blanket. 

“About bloody time…”, George’s sleepy voice came. 


End file.
